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CORE Metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk Provided by University of Bath Research Portal Citation for published version: Bouazzaoui, M, Wu, H-J, Roehrich, J, Squire, B & Roath, T 2020, 'Justice in inter-organizational relationships: A literature review and future research agenda', Industrial Marketing Management, vol. 87, pp. 128-137. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.indmarman.2020.02.003 DOI: 10.1016/j.indmarman.2020.02.003 Publication date: 2020 Document Version Peer reviewed version Link to publication Publisher Rights CC BY-NC-ND University of Bath General rights Copyright and moral rights for the publications made accessible in the public portal are retained by the authors and/or other copyright owners and it is a condition of accessing publications that users recognise and abide by the legal requirements associated with these rights. Take down policy If you believe that this document breaches copyright please contact us providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately and investigate your claim. Download date: 05. Jun. 2020 Justice in Inter-Organizational Relationships: A Literature Review and Future Research Agenda Meriem Bouazzaoui a; Hung-Jui Wu* b; Jens K. Roehrich a; Brian Squire a and Anthony S. Roath c a HPC Supply Chain Innovation Lab Information, Decisions and Operations Division School of Management University of Bath BA2 7AY, UK b Tilburg University Department of Management, Tilburg University, P.O. Box 90153, 5000LE Tilburg, The Netherlands c Department of Systems and Technology Harbert College of Business Auburn University Auburn, Alabama, USA *Author for correspondence: [email protected]; +3 1134 662 524 Abstract Organizational justice has made contributions to the inter-organizational literature by highlighting the effects of justice perceptions on behavioral, attitudinal, and organizational outcomes. However, research on justice perceptions remains scattered and falls short of addressing key elements of justice, and how these elements interact in an inter-organizational context. The lack of understanding calls for a comprehensive review and synthesis of extant studies. After a careful initial review of 375 papers from 1995 to 2018, this paper consolidates 79 papers on organizational justice at an inter-organizational level with respect to theoretical perspectives, methodologies, contexts, and research findings. The thematic and descriptive analyses offer deeper insights into the varying effects of different organizational justice dimensions, as well as brings forward limitations of current research including a focus on a: single side of the dyad, static view of justice, and single level of analysis. Consequently, the synthesis section, derived from the thematic analyses, draws out three fruitful key themes including: i) justice asymmetry; ii) justice dynamics; and iii) multilevel view of justice. The study positions fruitful research questions for each theme, before presenting the study’s limitations and implications. Keywords: Inter-organizational relationships, organizational justice, literature review, research agenda, justice asymmetry, justice dynamics 1. Introduction Effectively managing inter-organizational relationships has long been a central topic in business and industrial marketing (Möller & Halinen, 1999), supply chain (Griffith, Harvey, & Lusch, 2006; Roehrich & Lewis, 2014), strategic management (Ariño & Ring, 2010), and general management (Kang & Jindal, 2015) studies. Rapidly changing demands in dynamic markets have generated increased interdependence between firms seeking to gain access to, for instance, valuable resources, capabilities, and knowledge (Yang, Sivadas, Kang, & Oh, 2012; Zaefarian, Najafi-Tavani, Henneberg, & Naudé, 2016). This environment has motivated a myriad of research studies to explore approaches to maintaining and effectively managing inter-organizational relationships (e.g. Caldwell, Roehrich, & George, 2017; Roehrich, Selviaridis, Kalra, van der Valk, & Fang, 2020). The management of these relationships has a significant effect on performance outcomes, and both academia and practice alike have become interested in attitudinal and behavioral factors that are relevant to drive relationship performance. A stream of research examining organizations’ behavior highlighted justice as a foundation of organizations' interactions because organizations seek justice when comparing the rewards and costs involved in these interactions (Brown, Cobb, & Lusch, 2006; Luo, Liu, Yang, Maksimov, & Hou, 2015). Therefore, justice plays a key role in enhancing relationship performance. Partners’ perceptions of justice enhance knowledge sharing, relationship investment, commitment (Liu, Huang, Luo, & Zhao, 2012), and relationship quality (Kumar, Scheer, & Steenkamp, 1995). Conversely, if neglected, injustice may foster potential opportunism (Trada & Goyal, 2017), deteriorate trust, increase the potential of conflicts (Narasimhan, Narayanan, & Srinivasan, 2013), and ultimately spur relationship termination intentions (Yang et al., 2012). Extant literature has initially defined organizational justice as an employee’s perception of the organization’s environment of justice (Greenberg, 1990). Such perception is later extended from the personal to the inter- organizational level (Kumar et al., 1995) to understand better whether all partnering organizations participate fairly and equitably in decisions that affect the ability to operate competitively (Kumar et al., 1995). More recent studies have categorized justice in inter-organizational relationships as procedural, distributive, and interactional (Duffy, Fearne, Hornibrook, Hutchinson, & Reid, 2013), emphasizing that justice is the foundation of a partnership and a key factor in the motivation for continued collaboration (Luo et al., 2015). An expansive body of organizational behavior and psychology literature has focused on the nature of intra-firm justice with an emphasis on identifying the dimensions of justice and how they influence interactions at this level (Colquitt, Conlon, Wesson, Porter, & NG, 2001). However, comparatively very limited research has been conducted on inter-organizational justice, and existing studies have tended to ignore the basic features of inter-organizational relationships (Lumineau & Oliveira, 2018). For instance, research focused on one side of the dyad thereby missing the opportunity to examine potential asymmetries of justice perceptions between partners in business-to-business relationships (Liu et al., 2012). Moreover, even though inter-organizational relationships are dynamic, much of the literature has tended to adopt a static approach (Narasimhan et al., 2013). The exploration of justice dynamics of how inter-organizational justice (and its dimensions) develops as a series of events that partners experience over the relationship’s life-cycle is limited. Thus, prior research efforts leave the inter-organizational justice literature largely fragmented (Loosemore & Lim, 2015), calling for a comprehensive analysis and synthesis to pave future research avenues. In order to address these shortcomings in prior studies, we conducted a systematic literature review by consolidating existing knowledge of inter- organizational justice (Nicholson, LaPlaca, Al-Abdin, Breese, & Khan, 2018). In total, we reviewed 79 articles. We synthesized key findings, clarified current research themes, and also identified future research avenues. Thus, this study addresses the following research questions: (i) What is the current state of inter- organizational justice research?; and (ii) What are the emerging themes of interest for management research? We explore these questions in the justice literature by specifically addressing the relevant literature at the inter- organizational level. This is accomplished by developing a research agenda based on comprehensive bibliographic analyses and synthesis of published management literature over more than two decades. This timely review of inter-organizational justice is particularly imperative for scholars interested in business-to-business and industrial markets, as well as inter-organizational relationship management. Particularly, the relevance of justice to industrial marketing is underpinned by the fit of conceptual proximity between the concept of justice and key extant industrial marketing research such as the IMP interaction approach (Oswick, Fleming, & Hanlon, 2011). For instance, the IMP approach puts a significant emphasis on relationship quality between partnering organizations and postulates that relationship quality inherently predicts the interactions in a dyad (Håkansson & Snehota, 1989; Johnsen, Miemczyk, & Howard, 2017). Such interaction occurs within a relationship atmosphere, characterized by power, trust, cooperation, and conflict (Ellram & Murfield, 2019). Similarly, inter-organizational justice serves as a critical antecedent of relationship quality that shapes relationship atmosphere in which organizations operate (Kumar et al., 1995; Woo & Ennew, 2004). Inter- organizational justice and the IMP approach both emphasize the interactions between partnering organizations that drive the formation of relationship quality (Cropanzano, Byrne, Bobocel, & Rupp, 2001; Håkansson & Snehota, 1989). Both organizations (e.g. buyers and suppliers) are autonomous, but interdependent, entities which actively make decisions that shape and are shaped by the relationship climate, thus impacting each other’s perception of justice (Hu & Sheu, 2005; Walumbwa,